Bodies of War

World War I and the Politics of Commemoration in America, 1919-1933

Lisa Budreau

Publication Year: 2010

The United States lost thousands of troops during World War I, and the government gave next-of-kin a choice about what to do with their fallen loved ones: ship them home for burial or leave them permanently in Europe, in makeshift graves that would be eventually transformed into cemeteries in France, Belgium, and England. World War I marked the first war in which the United States government and military took full responsibility for the identification, burial, and memorialization of those killed in battle, and as a result, the process of burying and remembering the dead became intensely political. The government and military attempted to create a patriotic consensus on the historical memory of World War I in which war dead were not only honored but used as a symbol to legitimize America's participation in a war not fully supported by all citizens.

The saga of American soldiers killed in World War I and the efforts of the living to honor them is a neglected component of United States military history, and in this fascinating yet often macabre account, Lisa M. Budreau unpacks the politics and processes of the competing interest groups involved in the three core components of commemoration: repatriation, remembrance, and return. She also describes how relatives of the fallen made pilgrimages to French battlefields, attended largely by American Legionnaires and the Gold Star Mothers, a group formed by mothers of sons killed in World War I, which exists to this day. Throughout, and with sensitivity to issues of race and gender, Bodies of War emphasizes the inherent tensions in the politics of memorialization and explores how those interests often conflicted with the needs of veterans and relatives.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Preface

In September 2001, I crossed the Channel from France to England after
participating in a First World War battlefield tour that I researched and
coordinated for the Smithsonian Institution. In those frantic, fearful days
just after 9/11, more than twenty Americans still managed to join us in
Paris where the French warmly welcomed our group as we made our way...

Acknowledgments

With humility, I recognize the enormous debt I owe to all
those who contributed to the completion of Bodies of War. I begin by
thanking Jay Winter for being so receptive to my original research plans
and for his guidance, which ultimately led me to Oxford University. It was...

Abbreviations

Map

Introduction

The years immediately following the armistice in the United
States have generally been characterized by massive labor unrest, cultural
and class tension, ethnic turmoil, isolationist tendencies, nativism, and racial
prejudice—forces that dominated public concern and threatened the...

Part I. Repatriation

1. The Journey’s End

On a warm morning in late May 1933, Mrs. Estella Kendall of
Shenandoah, Iowa, walked anxiously through the Meuse-Argonne American
Cemetery in northern France. Many summers had passed since that
day in 1918 when she first learned of her son’s death: as a member of the
168th Infantry, 42nd Division, First Sergeant Harry N. Kendall had been...

2. Origins

After more than ninety years, the First World War still evokes
gruesome images of No Man’s Land, where bodies lie dead or slowly dying
amid the chaos of battle as machine-gun bullets crackle and whiz across
the parapets of mud-filled trenches. We think of the Western Front, a hellish...

3. A Daunting Pledge

Although the guns were silenced in November, the months
following the signing of the armistice in 1918 brought an increased
awareness of the extent of death and destruction caused by the war.
Nowhere was this devastation more apparent than across the Western
Front, in Belgium and northern...

4. Charon’s Price

On February 15, 1898, a massive explosion shattered the American
battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, killing 260 men. Although the
exact cause was unknown, the sinking was widely attributed to deliberate
sabotage by Spain. By April 1898, Republican president William McKinley...

5. A Problem of Policy

No nation was ready for the devastation of the First World
War, but in the aftermath of slaughter, each remained accountable for its
dead. The United States was equally unprepared for a war of such magnitude
and distance, despite the brevity of America’s overseas encounter...

6. Make Way for Democracy!

Americans were appalled that the French would disapprove of
the immediate and complete removal of bodies from all regions. Newspaper
editorials and congressional debates reflected the indignant spirit
of impatience, such as that of Representative Clement C. Dickinson of
Missouri, who addressed the House: “The French Government will not...

7. Troubled Waters

Immigrant soldiers played a key role in the American military
force that went to war in 1917, especially since no legal provision forbade
the voluntary enlistment of registered aliens from enemy nations. Tens of
thousands of the citizens and subjects of other countries joined up, an appreciable...

8. Bringing Them Home

The year 1920 brought increased impatience and renewed attempts
by Congress to flex its political muscle. In February, Charles Pierce
was called to testify before a House expenditures subcommittee, where,
as chief of the GRS, he struggled to justify delays abroad in response...

Part II. Remembrance

9. Republican Motherhood Thrives

On a rainy November in 1917 three Americans serving with
the U.S. 1st Division were brutally murdered in their dugouts during a
German raid within a supposedly quiet sector east of Verdun. That night,
Private Thomas Enright, Private Merle Hay, and Corporal James Gresham
became the first U.S. Army combat fatalities in the war...

10. A Star of Recognition

Within days of the St. Mihiel Salient deaths in eastern France,
a women’s movement to abolish traditional black mourning dress was
launched on the editorial pages of the American press. It began when
Mrs. Louise D. Bowen, the chairman of Chicago’s Women’s Committee of...

11. A Reluctant Giant

On November 11, 1921, the United States followed the example
set by France and Great Britain when it laid the body of an unidentified
soldier to rest at Arlington National Cemetery and designated it the “Unknown
Soldier.”1 The body had been chosen amidst elaborate ceremony in...

12. A Commission Is Born

Suggestions as to how the nation might best remember its heroes
were not publicly solicited after the war, but that did not prevent
Colonel Webb C. Hayes, son of former president Rutherford B. Hayes
and the chairman of the Cuba-China Battlefield Commission, from sharing...

13. Sacred Space and Strife

Within weeks of the ABMC’s founding, the secretary of war
relinquished chairmanship over the new commission and named General
Pershing in his place. The intention may have been at least partially calculated
to foster public support by separating the agency from the War...

14. We the People

By the latter half of 1920, net alien arrivals into the United
States averaged fifty-two thousand a month, and “by February 1921, the
jam at Ellis Island had become so great that immigration authorities were
hastily diverting New York–bound ships to Boston.”1 This massive influx of
immigrants collided with a wave of unemployment...

15. Americans Make Waves

By 1925, the ABMC had radically altered Pershing’s original
scheme for memorialization because the project handed to them was, they
insisted, unsuitable. “There are too many monuments,” members complained
after returning from their overseas inspection of the Allied cemeteries.1 Moreover...

Part III. Return

16. A Country for Heroes?

Organizers of the 1927 American Legion excursion billed it
“the occasion of a great and solemn pilgrimage” and expected participants
to arrive in vast numbers.1 Special rates were offered to all 713,000
veterans and their auxiliary members, who numbered nearly 300,000....

17. Pilgrim or Tourist?

In the years immediately following the First World War, the
ground over which visitors journeyed still reflected unprecedented carnage
and devastation previously unknown in warfare. David Lloyd describes
one traveler’s testimony upon seeing the battlefield for the first
time: “We could barely conceive how thoroughly the agents of deat...

18. Commemoration or Celebration?

Originally, the “Second AEF,” as it was termed, was scheduled
to set sail on the tenth anniversary of the signing of the armistice, but
months after the American Legion confirmed its plans, French officials
were informed that the convention had been rescheduled. It seems that...

19. Pilgrims’ Progress

On May 6, 1930, the SS America prepared to steam out of
Hoboken, New Jersey, with 231 women onboard, all guests of the U.S. government.
The Ziegfeld chorus girls had sent a large wreath in honor of the
mothers’ departure, and airplanes flew overhead dropping poppies onto...

20. Mothers and Politics

It was certainly an advantage that the nation’s largest and most
highly publicized pilgrimage of 1927 was organized by the American Legion,
since the U.S. government would most likely have reacted with indifference
toward any other organization lacking its official endorsement. Several
years prior, when the Legion made its first public mention of a movement...

21. Mathilda’s Victory

In 1928, Congressman Thomas S. Butler, a representative from
Pennsylvania, placed the familiar Gold Star pilgrimage legislation before
the 70th Congress once more, when he reintroduced the bill to the Committee
on Military Affairs.1 Chairman John M. Morin, another Pennsylvanian,
presided...

22. Stars of Black and Gold

When the 71st Congress (1929–1931) opened on April 15, 1929,
Oscar S. De Priest, a newly elected Republican from Illinois, prepared to
take his seat. With the press and many African Americans looking on
from the segregated visitors gallery, De Priest took the oath of office. He...

23. Highballs on the High Seas

Where the welfare and comfort of the Gold Star mothers and
widows were concerned, the army overlooked nothing to ensure the success
of its high-profile public-relations venture. For the military escorts,
the moments before sailing were fraught with detail. On the morning of
departure, officers were responsible for inspecting all equipment,...

24. A Personal Experience

The Gold Star pilgrimages were paraded before the world in
a colorful array of guises and pretexts that included heartfelt images of
democratic solidarity, American homogeneity, a peace mission, and a gesture
from a grateful nation. But behind this public façade, shades of hypocrisy,...

Epilogue

“What will be thought of the great adventure of the War Department
in returning thousands of dead to the United States in fifty years
or a century from now . . . is impossible to say,” mused Colonel Harry F.
Rethers, chief of the Paris office of the Graves Registration Service in 1920....

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